re: Hentges commits to Bama

The lost decade of Mizzou football really took Mizzou down a few notches in a lot of these kids' houses.

Mizzou made its first bowl game in 14 years right about the time he was born, so he may like Mizzou, but unless his parents went to Mizzou (I don't know) they likely weren't die hard Mizzou fans.

I think that's the same for most people in Missouri. That shite stretch of Mizzou football did a lot to kill the real fandom and sidewalk type fandom in the state. I think it will improve as people that were interested in Mizzou football in the early 2000's and had kids start coming up through the high school years in Missouri.

I say it a lot, but as a young kid in Columbia, the least cool thing you could wear was black and gold. That stretch of horrible, horrible, Mizzou football is making things a lot more difficult even now. Hopefully the fallout from that will be over soon.

It's all a theory, but I think there's something behind it.

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That's pretty surprising. Not what I would have expected at all. What do you think the reason is behind it?

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I think the others have all pretty much summed it up. The powers that be at the University all but destroyed the athletic department in the 80's and into the 90's. Only the bare minimum of investments were made into the programs. The facilities suffered. The coaching hires suffered. I think the football team probably averaged about 3 wins a year in the 80's under Widenhofer and Stull. Maybe slightly better in the 90's under Smith. It really wasn't until GP took over that the program began to resemble anything that it was prior to those decades. For those generations of fans, Mizzou was not viewed as a place you go if you were worth a damn. You only went there if you couldn't go anywhere else. The success under GP, the monies being sunk into the program, the facilities upgrades and so on really are in their infancy if you think about it. The good news is, is that the kids growing up today only know Mizzou as being a successful program. The problem is, those kids didn't grow up in a house that was adorned in black and gold because their parents grew up in those dark years. Assuming Mizzou can keep up the winning more years than not, more kids will grow up with black and gold in their house than the current generation of kids.